President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
Public-private partnerships are crucial for success in a suppression campaign. Civil society actors can make sense of low-level contextualized problems better than the state, but the state retains more power; in partnership both gain the resource advantages of the state and the contextualization advantages of the low level actor. This partnership is contingent upon public support and upon the efficiency of the suppression regime to absorb that support.
